LOGIN | REGISTER | RSS FEEDS

On the Forecheck

Next entry: Riding to the rescue

Previous entry: How to sell the Coolest Game on Earth

Is a missing Scooter Nashville’s problem?

by Forechecker on 01/26/09 at 05:09 PM ET
Comments (4)

While pondering the possible solutions to the Nashville Predators’ offensive woes today, I was trying to decide on which angle to evaluate when @pwnicholson Twittered the following...

Can you run a comparison of the Preds w/ & w/o Nichol in the lineup? I’ve seen stuff in the past showing how ‘vital’ he is.

This issue had been bouncing around inside my head for a few days now, and was brought up again in this morning’s update in the Tennessean about Jones & Sulzer getting recalled from Milwaukee.  While Greg de Vries will go along on the road trip through Western Canada that begins Wednesday night in Vancouver, Scott Nichol is still “sidelined indefinitely” with the concussion he suffered December 9 on a hit by Rob Davison.

Now, nobody’s going to confuse Scott Nichol with a top-line center, but how big a hole is left in the Nashville lineup without him?

On the penalty kill, Nichol’s forte, the team has gotten along well; after struggling early on, Nashville currently stands 6th in the NHL with an 84% PK.  The power play, which Nichol doesn’t participate in, has been consistently lousy all season, so outside of perhaps seeing guys like Erat and Legwand logging some extra time on the penalty kill, and the consequent loss of EV/PP time or extra fatigue at the end of the game, I just don’t see Nichol’s absence having had anything more than a marginal impact on the Predators’ special teams. That’s not so much a criticism of Nichol as it is a validation of Nashville’s depth in quality penalty killers.

Let’s focus, then, on even strength.  Courtesy of the juicy scripts over at TimeOnIce.com, here is a look at how the Nashville centers have performed (at even strength) in the 27 games before, and the 19 games including and after, that fateful December 9 game against Vancouver:

You know what I see here?  Not much, honestly. I would have expected to see Nichol’s absence indicated by poor results from guys like Fiddler, Peverley and Santorelli, the beneficiaries of Nichol’s missing ice time, but all three of them have performed reasonably well here; this table shows the total team shot information while each given player is on the ice, where the Corsi number (think Total Shots For - Total Shots Against) is a pretty fair measure of which end of the rink is seeing more action.  Peverley’s performance in this regard is especially enlightening, and perhaps a reason why Atlanta was so keen on playing him with Kovalchuk.  I held this table just to the centers, but by and large most of the Preds have had positive Shot +/- and Corsi numbers (including a surprisingly high +51 Corsi for Antti Pihlstrom) since December 9.

So where, then, has the offense gone?  Goals Per Game have dropped from 2.78 before 12/9 to 1.79 afterwards, and the cause basically boils down to the Nashville scorers not finishing their chances.  Even Strength Shooting Percentage was 9.2% before Nichol got hurt, a figure right around the NHL average.  Since then, however, that figure has dropped through the floor, to a woeful 4.9%!

And it’s not like the mix of shots has changed to some extreme degree:

This tells us that while the defense (whose long bombs are less likely to score) are taking a greater portion of Nashville’s shots at even strength, it’s certainly not a large enough factor to account for more than a sliver of that huge drop in goal-scoring.

So the long answer, I guess, is that I can’t sincerely pin any of the Predators’ recent struggles on the loss of Scott Nichol; I’d still like to get him back in the lineup as soon as possible, but the real trouble in Nashville is one of burying those precious scoring opportunities, and that wasn’t Nichol’s job to begin with.  For more detail on Nashville’s shooting woes, check back with me tomorrow…

SF = Shots For
SA = Shots Against
MS = Missed Shots
BS = Blocked Shots

Filed in: Nashville Predators, NHL Statistical Analysis | On the Forecheck | Permalink
 Tags: scott+nichol,

Comments

What is the team’s record with and without Nichol though? I can try to pull these numbers later, but don’t have a good way to do it right now (hoping you do).

My guess is over the last few years, we are a much better team with him in the lineup than out. Some of that has to do with the PK time you mentioned, but I think a lot of it also has to do with what other teams have to do with him on the ice (similar to Tootoo) and possibly his leadership in the locker room. I know he’s rarely spoken of as a “leader”, but he’s clearly one of the more articulate guys on the roster if you’ve heard him interviewed. Recent revelations have also implied that there are leaders leading and things being said in the closed locker room that are very different from what the team is relaying to the press conference. Maybe Nichol is a component of that.

Just speculation.

Posted by pwnicholson from Nashville, TN on 01/26/09 at 05:25 PM ET

The team record was 14-11-2 prior to that Vancouver game, and they’ve been 6-12-1 since then… sorry for not including that above!

Posted by Forechecker from Nolensville, TN on 01/26/09 at 05:28 PM ET

I love Scotty Nichol…especially on the penalty kill.  I guess the win-loss comparisons say something I’m not sure this huge offensive funk can be blamed on the loss of Nichol.  That just seems to be a team plague.

So Trotzy is shaking things up and goin back to the 2006 line of Arnie centering Sully and JP.  Should be fun to watch.  I also looks like, according to that Tennessean article, Leggy centering Erat and Jones will be another line.  That line has some potential but worries me a lot . Legwand and Erat have at times completely disappeared this year.

So in terms of lines.  Who knows what Barry will do, but my thoughts are…it leaves the following combos as Bonk centering Toots and Smithson.  This line should come back together.  It had a nice run awhile back of being our most consistent line.  Lets see if they cant get going again after the break. 

That leaves the 4th line as Fiddler centering Antti/Ward? or Belak depending on who’s scratched.  Against a physical team like the Canucks I’d say Belak needs to play.  So thats that. 

The other big item to watch is who’s in goal.  If Dan Ellis is still the #1 goalie, as Trotz has indicated, then he needs to start at Vancouver and at Calgary…no questions asked.  If not Trotz needs to come out and say.  Its about wins and losses in this league and I’m going with Pekka.  Stop dragging these kids around.

Posted by GT from Nashville on 01/27/09 at 01:03 PM ET

Just added it up going back a bit…
Since the start of the 2005-2006 season the Preds are:
125-74-23 with Scott Nichol (0.563 winning percentage, .615 points percentage)
and
41-38-7 without Scott Nichol (0.477 winning percentage, .517 points percentage)

The Preds have only had a winning record with him out of the lineup twice. Once in Nov/Dec of 2005 when he was out for 27 games (18-10-3) and during his 9-game suspension in Dec of 2006 (7-2-0). Every other time we’ve been a losing team without him.

The Preds have never been a losing team with him in the lineup for the last 4 years. The closest we’ve been was going 14-11-2 at the start of this year.

I have no explanation for this outside of the previous speculation. Nothing logical about it. Just very interesting.

I’d be curious what these numbers would look like for some other players (Erat, Legwand, Arnott, Dumont, DeVries, etc) but don’t have time or patience to figure it out right now.

Posted by pwnicholson from Nashville, TN on 01/27/09 at 02:12 PM ET

Add a Comment

Please limit embedded image or media size to 575 pixels wide.

Add your own avatar by joining Kukla's Korner, or logging in and uploading one in your member control panel.

Captchas bug you? Join KK or log in and you won't have to bother.

Most Recent Blog Posts

About Kukla’s Korner

Kukla’s Korner is updated around the clock with the work of our own talented bloggers, plus links to the best hockey writing around the internet.  We strive to bring you all the breaking hockey news as it happens.

The home page allows you to see the latest postings from every blog on the site. Subscribe here.  For general inquiries and more, please contact us anytime.

Get the top online sports betting bonuses available to sports betters!

When learning from experts it’s best to learn personally from them, or from their blog. We can provide that with poker lessons blog, your home to learn poker personally.

Do you get shocked from the luck in the game of poker? Stop getting shocked and start being a Poker Shoker.

Free Bet

As well as reading about hockey games, you can also find info about poker like which poker sites accept American Express or which are the best Canadian poker sites and also find the top rakeback sites at rakeback.net.

Kukla’s Korner is always a free service for readers, but it costs some money to maintain. If you’re ever in a position to donate a few dollars to help out, we’d be very appreciative.

Another way to help KK